Neko Case’s The Worse Things Get … born of grief and depression

Roots-pop siren Neko Case’s sixth studio album is haunted by the deaths of family and friends.

In her latest album Neko Case delves into new territory for her. She presents some of the most emotionally riveting work of her career. Her album is entitled The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You.

Neko Case was mired in a bit of a rough patch while making her latest album, but she’s not looking to host her own pity party or anything.

Quite the opposite. Ever blunt, the Virginia-born singer/songwriter wants it made clear that her recent, trying experiences — the deaths of a couple of friends, her grandmother and both of her parents and a subsequent battle with debilitating depression — are far from unique. Her troubles are no more special than anyone else’s just because she gets to sing about them, she stresses.

The fact that Case is singing about her troubles specifically on The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You is of note, though, as her five previous studio albums have largely been populated by smartly sketched characters, fanciful animals and elemental forces rather than Neko Case herself. This is new territory for her. And while delving into the personal has resulted in some of the most emotionally riveting work of her career — when Case declares “My mother, she did not love me” on the a cappella anti-lullaby “Nearly Midnight in Honolulu” it’s impossible not to get chills — you can tell she’s a little uncomfortable being so unguarded.

“That’s just because it’s all I was capable of, I think,” she says. “And not in a grandiose way like: ‘It’s all I could channel. Sadness, my Muse.’ It really is so average. It’s such a normal thing. Lots of people get depressed.

“I just had to mourn the dead for awhile. They were dyin’ all over and I had to deal with it . . . They didn’t all pass at the same time or anything but I never grieved for any of them. I never slowed down. I just kept working and working and working, so my body just took me out at the knees.”

Case was closer to her grandmother “than any other human being in the world.” She had no relationship with her parents — as she puts it: “They were children and they didn’t want a kid and I was alone most of the time, so I don’t really know what it’s like to have parents” — but that only made their passing difficult to take in an altogether different fashion. As it turns out, “it’s not any easier if you don’t like them.”

Thus, Case was left trying to write through her grief in a slow-motion fog so thick she barely remembers starting some of the songs on The Worse Things Get.

“The record happened despite the situation, not because of or about,” she says. “There’s a lot of stuff about feeling crappy on it, but I hope that by the time things made it to tape there was a sense of humour about it also. I definitely wanted to point out that there were really hilarious moments. And it’s supermundane. I didn’t want it to seem like I felt my experience was really important or something. It’s only important to me on a personal level. It’s not like, ‘You people are so lucky I’m sharing this with you.’ ‘During my time in rehab . . .’ I hate that sh--.”

The creative struggle involved in pulling The Worse Things Get together worked out for the best, in any case. The songs orbit in the same uniquely Case-ian roots-pop netherworld last visited on 2009’s stellar Middle Cyclone, but there are dashes of old-timey R&B, rollicking rock, experimental ambience and even ragtime jazz along the way — stylistic side trips that often came as a surprise to Case herself.

“I do trust myself enough to where, if I know I have half the songs and the other half are partway done, I have to trust that they’ll come together in the studio. And I like that,” she says. “It gives you a bit of variety and different feels and different kinda speeds, in a way. I like not knowing everything ahead of time. ’Cause it’s gonna work out.”

Bad patch behind her, Case has now fully reverted to her workaholic old ways. There’s a new album with her Canadian chums the New Pornographers in the works, and already another Neko record raring to go that, she says, will be sort of a “part two” to The Worse Things Get. She already suspects “the best song I’ve ever written” will figure on it.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” she says of her return to full speed. “I’ve come out the other side of the tunnel. I’m in my forties, I’m not married, I don’t have any kids. I gave up a normal life for this. Not that I was offered a normal life, but I have to own this. I would like to go from journeyman to master if I can. So now is the time for that.”

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